Freetrade in the news šŸ—žļø

If you want to understand why the share price for ordinary A & B shareholders is so low then this post is informative - series B shareholders get their money first before earlier round investors get their share (this is not unusual and why private companies are such a minefield) - if valuation was above Ā£300m it would be a very different. 2018 crowdfunding invested at around Ā£0.50 at a valuation of Ā£18M. And despite the valuation being close to 10x they only received 2x. Dilution combined with being a junior share holder kills you

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Told youā€¦ what a pathetically weak deal and a wasted decade for investors

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Told me what?

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I hope @Viktor will have the decency to show up here and answer some questions.

Closing at a valuation lower than the previous Crowdfunding round is disrespectful especially after showing to the world that Freetrade was already financially stable. Shame on you Freetrade. Really disappointed with this ending!

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Thisā€¦

Iā€™m not counting on that.
There will not be any apology. They will do by the book so no legal recourse.
If you are getting your money count yourself lucky.
This will be end of my crowdfunding journey.

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I think its end to a lot of peopleā€™s crowdfunding journey on here.

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No idea what you are on about.

I clearly laid out what people would get back at various prices with the preference stack accounted for.

I said Iā€™d be happy with under Ā£500m.

You didnā€™t tell me anything. I knew that a deal would be for nothing like what most on here expected - hence me saying I would even be happy with Ā£300m.

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I think the real kicker is not explaining which shareholders (i.e. crowdfunders) will get what based on each round more clearly in that email - a real kick in the teeth to leave people scrambling to work out the payout given the nature of the average investor.

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Saf you way off - SlimShadey was spot on. Itā€™s me that you should be saying ā€œtold you soā€ too :rofl:

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My bad, Iā€™m sorry, I take it back.

I told @WBofGreenInvestment lol


The ā€œtold yaā€ was a throwaway comment. Itā€™s a poor deal, only way itā€™s not is if the alternative is we lose everything we invested here. I wanted better for everyone invested in the journey.

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Very disappointingā€¦ having got themselves into a promising position they bail at the first opportunityā€¦
Makes you wonder if they donā€™t believe in themselves and is just a huge relief to offload it?
I will not even break evenā€¦
I have invested in other Crowdfunding options and wait for those to realise, but so far my enthusiasm is dwindling as early investors appear to lose out. :disappointed:

Regards,

Gareth

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In case you want to understand more as to why Viktor is very happy happy with this deal that brings him 15x return on all of his life savings at the moment of 2016 and seeing he worked at Google and other companies for a while it probably not nothing. I also imagine if he stays on he will be well compensated for further growing a company that is now growing naturally and via inertia - sold at the exact right moment before it actually started making money and starting to scale big.

I also guess itā€™s one thing to invest in successful start-ups and another to actually build one or turn one around.

ā€œBasically, the platform takes care of everything. So I invested in the very first crowdfunding round of Monzo and Revolut, which both of them turned out to be great investments, but nothing is as big as my investment in Freetrade, which was my third investment that summer, in summer 2016. I saw the pitch and I had the same feeling again like this, this has to exist. I wanted to open my ISO. Then I arrived in the UK, I ended up with a suboptimal solution, eight pounds per transaction. So I was like, What can I do to make this happen? So I looked across my bank accounts in Ireland, Hong Kong, I put all the money I had at the time, and I invested everything in Freetrade.ā€

Full interview: Freetradeā€™s Viktor Nebehaj on crowdfunding as advertising ā€” Automated Creative - AI driven ads for social and display

Iā€™ve said this before, crowdfunding is basically paying the salaries of the founders until they can get a preferential exit for them only and not the investors.

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Iā€™ve made money here, but really disappointed. Iā€™ll probably stay with the platform, however, unless the ā€œfree Plus for lifeā€œ dies with the transaction - assuming this canā€™t happen, given itā€™s to continue operating as a standalone business. Thoughts?

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I for one am happy for Freetrade - I never invested to make any money (I invested from R3), I just believed in the app and dreamed of FT surviving and being bought by one of the bigger boys.

:joy::joy::joy: - and by Millionaires they probably mean like 2, one of them probably Viktor. Talk about ā€œgreat journalismā€.

for context in in '21 at a valuation of 265M there were 6 ppl that would have become millionaires - given the other rounds and money they got I assume that number went down given 1) the smaller price 2) the overall dilution.

Context is this article from Sifted from April '21: https://sifted.eu/articles/freetrade-crowdfunding-feat

Context #2: The mega raise at 650M valuation was in Nov '21 (which ended up not getting any VC suppot)

Context #3: The Sifted article refers to the March '21 raise from private equity - this one: Freetrade raises Ā£35m from private equity

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from IG memo

f

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Really really poor journalism.

I worry that there are far more people affected by a loss from the Crowdcube ā€œmega raise at Ā£650mā€ in Nov 21 than there are ā€œCrowdcubeā€ millionnaires.

Hopefully some better journalists report on the story.

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